Exo et l’Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) sont fiers d’annoncer le lancement d’un projet pilote de paiement sans contact à bord de certaines lignes d’autobus. Réalisé en collaboration avec la Société de transport de Laval (STL) qui met à profit sa technologie et son expérience, le paiement par carte bancaire sera mis à l’essai dans le secteur des Laurentides, notamment à Saint-Jérôme.
Les clients qui paient leur passage par carte de crédit ou de débit sans contact auront accès à une correspondance valide d’une durée de 120 minutes dans les autobus d’exo des lignes 9, 22, 24, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105 et 107 ainsi que dans les autobus de la STL.
You can, it’s just the type of OPUS that has to support it, and the existing fares on it. If you have a zone A fare already, the machine doesn’t know if you want to use your AB or ABC fare, unless it’s an unlimited fare like Unlimited Evening or a 3 day pass that’s Zone AB. If we had to tap out this wouldn’t be a problem
I understand now, but when you consider that the years long fare realignment was supposed to simplify things for the user… It’s just begging for people to not understand, make a mistake and then get a ticket from a fare inspector.
Just make it easy, you want to leave the Metro, then tap out. you don’t want to tap out on the train. Well, we’re going to charge you the most expensive ticket possible, you don’t want to tap out on the bus then we’re also going to charge you the most expensive ticket possible.
Tap out will be a feature of Concerto but not required day one
When I asked my prof (who was the architect behind the new fare zones and the refonte tarifaire at the ARTM), he couldn’t tell me directly why they decided against tap out, but he did point me to the cost of installing fare machines in the fare-paid zone (for those who did not get the correct fare), as well as the cost to get electricity and communications linked up to the machines, and some stations having limited space to place new ticket machines.
In his defense, all Skytrain stations have these “exit-ticket machines.”
What I don’t understand, is that since nearly all stations are in the same fare zone, these “exit-fare machines” could have been only necessary at the stations that are in zone B, to pay the difference between Zone A and B fares. This means at the 3 Laval stations (which have tons of space by design), and Longueuil-U.-de-Sher. station (which does not have exit turnstiles anyways).
I am just guessing they didn’t have the funds, the willingness to collaborate with the STM (I am guessing very much on this one), nor a cost-vs-benefits analysis to justify the expense of retrofitting existing stations. Nor, they wanted to pay even more funds to modify even more significantly the turnstiles to have tap out. I am also guessing with the REM turnstiles, they didn’t foresaw the option to have tap out, and since the contract for those turnstiles was already completed, it would have been too costly to ask for a retrofit.
I am just disappointed that the ARTM has the lack of confidence to explain such reasons. They could have just explained that since they have financial pressures, they don’t have the budget to do such overhauls to the system, and thus they did not implement tap out, due to the complexity of installing these “exit-fare machines.”
